A visit to Hinton Ampner

My hubby fancied a trip to a National Trust property on Sunday when the weather was lovely so we found one not too far away and that we hadn’t been too before – Hinton Ampner was the place we finally decided on.

It was a lovely drive through the picturesque village of Alresford. When we got there though we ended up parking in the overflow car park which was for grazing sheep and therefore covered in poo! Not the best start for a trip out, when you’ve got two sleepy ones to get out of the car along with a double buggy, but I think we managed to avoid it!

First stop as usual was lunch. There was only one place where you could buy food (with one till point) but various places to sit and eat. The queue for buying food was long and it went slowly, the staff were friendly and helpful nevertheless. They’d also run out of quite a lot of the children’s lunch box items which was a shame as I would have got these, but after waiting in the queue for so long I didn’t think the children would want to wait for much longer so they both had a cheese scone. Bodhi seemed to enjoy his, but Charley didn’t really touch hers.

After lunch we had a look around the grand house. Unfortunately the roof was being repaired due to storms in 2014 so the first floor was off-limits but the ground floor was still open to see.

I enjoy having a quick wander through the rooms, trying to imagine how they would have been lived in years ago, and it normally is quick with toddlers in tow. However, Charley was given some cards that had an ornament from each of the rooms and she had to find the ornament in each room so even Charley enjoyed going round the house.

Outside we went to the vegetable gardens first which were full of things for the children to see and there was plenty of space for Charley and Bodhi to run/walk about on. It was such a lovely, Sunday afternoon enjoying some late summer sun. The flowers in full bloom were also stunning.

We also found the little maze that Charley walked around, trying to find the pot of treasure in the middle. She eventually got there and was very pleased to get a few coins finally.

Hi, I’m Julie!

I'm mum to Charley and Bodhi. I blog about days out and travel adventures in our VW Campervan, Betsy. Campervanning is a whole new world to us so come and join us on our adventure as we explore the UK and Europe. (There might be a sneaky bit about parenting every now and again too.)